Caps and Gowns
by Bellsie805
Summary: And what is love?


Title: Caps and Gowns

Author: Bellsie

Rating: PG-13

Ship: A dash of Cuddy/Cameron

Characters: Cuddy and Cameron

Summary: Whom do we choose to love?

Author's note: This is different.

And so the conversation slips

Among velleities and carefully caught regrets

Through attenuated tones of violins

Mingled with remote cornets

And begins.

–"Portrait of a Lady," T.S. Eliot

Cameron finds herself wandering the halls of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital late at night. House isn't here—he's home, home, home and she wishes she were there with him, curled under his arm, watching television. Arguing. Kissing. Loving each other.

("Pipe dreams, Allison, those fluffy dogs and cats and _love, love, love_…nothing but pipe dreams," her mother assures her at seventeen. She's the product of a broken home and has been searching for her perfect life ever since. Married young; widowed younger. And these things never get easier to tell.)

But she's not with him, so she's here, roaming the halls. She did that a lot in high school—practically graduated with honors in the study of the tile. A restless kid—a dreamer, an idealist. Some traits she'll never shake.

Take a right, take a left…don't go straight and avoid his office. She does this too much—this dogged determination to get a man who doesn't want a woman. To get a man who loves his loneliness, who revels in his misery, who finds fun in his barbs. She does this and she gets cut and bleeds and she never learns.

(All those dumb life lessons she should've written down. She chooses to ignore them. She'd rather wallow in her vat of ignorance. Bliss goes to those who are ignorant. Realizations and reality will set in once she's let down again. Oh well. She's always liked fiery crashes anyway.)

So, she walks and walks and walks and her feet hurt and her teeth hurt (she thinks she chipped one of them on some hard candy) and it's the same story, different ending, time and time again.

She stops and looks out the window. Her thoughts make her think of history and violence and wars, wars, wars that never end.

"Oh, and we've got these madmen and maniacs with their dreams stretching continents and skipping oceans. They've got their guns and planes and tanks and things—the weapons of war, they like to sneer and grin and lie," she whispers to the window.

"But we believe them and what does that make us? Gullibility is as much of a sin as madness."

And the moonlight shines, chasing imaginary demons down the windowpane. The metal reflects and shimmers in the midnight sun. The moon is full tonight and the she feels like she's five again, staring up at the circle in the sky.

She remembers the years of her life by the moon and the stars. Childhood memories of her father taking her sleigh riding and pointing out the constellations surface first and then they segue into those of when she was a teenager and she found comfort in the constancy of the celestial beings as her world tumbled, spiraled into madness. College found her immersed in her studies, but there was the night sky and its peace and never death, never death, no cancer…No cancer.

Cameron keeps walking and she passes by Cuddy's office. Light's on and papers are scattered everywhere—Cameron can see Cuddy's head slumped over her calendar. Black hair rests on pale arms and Cameron's always loved Grecian beauty.

(She learned that life's too short ages ago and she pursues life with the dogma that every man and woman deserves his or her chance. She's learned that this is life, life, life and that if she wants it to be a soap opera or a Russian romance novel she can make it into those things. This? This is life that she's trying to live.)

So she pushes the door open and walks into the office.

"Dr. Cuddy?" She asks gently.

Cuddy's head snaps up with incredible speed. Her eyes are bigger than normal, Cameron notes. The effects of sleep and drowsiness and too much stress. There are bags underneath her eyes and her hair's a mess, but Cameron thinks she's pretty anyway.

"What are you doing here, Dr. Cameron?" Cuddy asks with agitation evident in her voice.

"There was some paperwork I needed to finish up," she replies.

"Go home. Stop being House's maid," Cuddy snaps.

They've never gotten along, Cameron muses. Never. They don't mesh; some women don't. Cuddy's too sharp—edges and sarcasm and a female House, only not as miserable because she's got a full leg and she's not addicted to anything and her female tendencies keep her out of the black abyss of misanthropy that House has fallen into headfirst. Cuddy concerns herself with her hospital and lavishes her maternal instincts on the building and the papers and making sure everyone stays out of trouble. Cameron witnesses it; everyone sees it.

"I'm not House's maid. He just doesn't like to answer his mail. When I was a kid, I used to write to famous people and always hated the form letters I got back in response. I figure these people need to get responses. Their matters are of life and death. I was a kid who liked movies," she says with a smile on her face. Cuddy laughs.

"You're a pathetic idealist. What do you say? 'Oh, Dr. House is too busy. We're so sorry. But we can recommend you to someone else!' Or, do you tell them the truth? 'House is a bastard and he thinks your disease is boring. Take some aspirin.' Which one is it?" Cuddy snaps back.

"What ever happened to you?" Cameron asks in a horrified whisper.

"Do we choose whom we love?" Cuddy remarks apropos of nothing. "I mean, do we pick the people we fall in love with, do we consciously look at them and say 'I could love that person?' Or does it just happen? Is it just meant to be?"

Cameron is taken aback. Digressions on love from the stony cold Dr. Cuddy? Midlife crisis?

"What brought that up?" Cameron asks.

"You asked whatever happened to me. I fell in love at sixteen and never got over it," she answers.

"Why don't you like me?"

"Because you're the person I chose not to be. I was pathetic as a teenager and I vowed I wouldn't be like that as an adult. And I'm not. Some people don't click, you know?" She says.

Cameron's momentarily pained by this response. She picks a chair and flops down into it.

"I think we choose who we love to some extent. I think there's that carnal attraction that's there, but I think, that, in the end, if someone needs to be loved then we have the ability to love them," Cameron says.

"And how utterly appropriate that is coming from you."

"I don't know. Love's more complicated than any of us," Cameron says and rests her hands on the side of the chair.

And in the silence of the room, the age-old question rears its head and Cameron and Cuddy both hear it asking—_do you love?_

"Do you think it's better to form attachments to other human beings even though they're transient? Do you risk heartbreak and grief at the end? Or do you simply accept that love is not the cure-all? How'd you do it?" Cuddy asks.

"I don't know. I never understood I how I made it through his illness. You accept it, I guess. I've always had a savior complex," Cameron shrugs and the tears start to shimmer in her eyes.

"Oh, God, I upset you," Cuddy says and grabs a tissue from the box on her desk.

Cameron's really crying now, thinking of dead men and dying people and how every day someone goes through the same thing she went through and that it's a horrible, horrible, horrible thing and that the world has so many smart people and so much money and why, oh, why hasn't there been a cure for this stupid, stupid, stupid disease?

Cuddy offers Cameron the tissues and she takes it. She wipes her eyes and blows her nose. She's not quite at ease in front of a woman who just admitted a few minutes ago that she really doesn't like her. But she keeps dabbing at her face as Cuddy starts to talk.

"I was sixteen. He was forty-five and my teacher. I had a schoolgirl crush on him and he liked me. Probably too much. I sent him a love letter that year and he sent me one back and that's how we would communicate, like that. Through these letters. There were so many of them. And, at the end of senior year, we went out to dinner. We spent a lot of time together that summer. No one understood the relationship, but I loved him so much. I went to college in August and in October of that year he ended up dying in a car accident. I cried for two weeks and told myself I wouldn't ever do that again. And I haven't," Cuddy tells her with her eyes glued to some point in the back of her office.

Tragedies connect them, Cameron thinks. She grabs Cuddy's hand because she knows what it's like to lose a love, to lose someone who means everything. Moon, sun, grass, air. Stars and constellations.

"That's why I'm here. Old. Childless. Mean."

"You're not mean. You're tired. You obviously haven't slept," Cameron tells her.

"Saint Cameron. Can you forgive everyone?"

"Only the people who are in need of it," Cameron says and, with her big brown eyes, peers up at Cuddy.

Cuddy snorts.

"I'm in need of saving aren't I?"

Cameron stands up and, even though the night didn't start like this, she leans in and gently gives Cuddy a kiss on the lips. She's never kissed a woman before, but Cuddy's here and she's hurting and Cameron knows it's not fair to keep her from feeling better. From knowing that someone else is here with her, to help her. To make sure she's okay.

And Cuddy doesn't resistant. Her hands go to Cameron's shoulders and Cameron thinks she's going to push her away—to shove her out of the room and into the hallway and fire her—but she doesn't, she just clings to Cameron's blouse and clings and clings and clings.

When they break apart, they're breathing heavily and Cameron brings her hand up and traces Cuddy's always-suspicious brow, which is softening slowly.

"What was that?" She asks Cameron.

"I…I don't know. I think I'm going to go," Cameron responds and drops her hands. Cuddy's grip slackens and Cameron slowly walks out of the room.

"You know," Cuddy says from her position near her desk. "You know, I don't hate you."

Cameron pushes the door open and smiles.

"I know."

And at the end, there's life, love, love, love and the choices Cameron makes at night. Those rights and lefts and avoidances. Oh, the things she does in the dark while staring at tile.

As she continues to walk, she can't help but think that she's content. Not happy, but content with the feeling of Cuddy's lips lingering on hers. Perhaps, at the end of the day, she's found a beginning.


End file.
